New indoor pickleball club opens in Goleta, expanding Santa Barbara play options

A former Bed Bath & Beyond in Goleta is now serving Santa Barbara County’s newest indoor pickleball hub, with The Picklr Santa Barbara opening at Fairview Shopping Center and bringing seven professional-grade courts into nearly 24,000 square feet of retail space.

The club opened at 189 N. Fairview Ave. under local owner-operators Ted and Trish Guggenheim, who are turning the old big-box shell into a dedicated playing and training site. The facility includes two official championship-sized courts, warm-up and cooldown space, showers, lockers, a lounge and meeting room, a pro shop, ball machines, a dink wall and Wingfield AI training systems. Its grand opening celebration was announced as open to the public, with earlier coverage saying the club planned to operate seven days a week from 6 a.m. to midnight.

For everyday players, the pitch is simple: more court time, less waiting, and a place to play when Santa Barbara weather or daylight makes outdoor sessions harder to keep consistent. Ted Guggenheim said he wanted the reliability of indoor courts after moving to Santa Barbara from Colorado in 2024, a sentiment that lands with plenty of local players who have learned how quickly open play can fill up on a good afternoon. The new club adds not just inventory, but a more structured setting for drills, lessons, league play and social runs than many public parks can offer.

The business model has been building toward this moment. The Picklr Santa Barbara launched founder membership sales on March 18, with one report putting the total founder pool at 400 spots and the first 150 deposits priced at $179 a month. That kind of limited-membership structure signals how indoor pickleball has moved beyond novelty and into a more formal club economy, where access, programming and predictable hours matter as much as raw court count.

The opening also lands inside a larger national surge. The Sports & Fitness Industry Association said 24.3 million Americans played pickleball in 2025, while USA Pickleball’s 2025 Annual Growth Report said the Pickleheads database added more than 2,300 new places to play last year, bringing the national total to 18,258 locations and 82,613 known courts. In Goleta, that boom now has a concrete address, and for Santa Barbara-area players chasing dependable court time, it may be the kind of opening that changes the weekly routine.